• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.186-192
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• 2022

Flow accelerated corrosion (FAC) is a type of pipe corrosion in which the pipe thickness decreases depending on the fluid flow conditions. In nuclear power plants, FAC mainly occurs in the carbon steel pipes of a secondary system. However, because the temperature of a secondary system pipe is over 150 ℃, in situ monitoring using a conventional ultrasonic non-destructive testing method is difficult. In our previous study, we developed a waveguide ultrasonic thickness measurement system. In this study, we applied a waveguide ultrasonic thickness measurement system to monitor the thinning of the pipe according to the change in pH. The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute installed FAC-proof facilities, enabling the monitoring of internal fluid flow conditions, which were fixed for ~1000 h to analyze the effect of the pH. The measurement system operated without failure for ~3000 h and the pipe thickness was found to be reduced by ~10% at pH 9 compared to that at pH 7. The thickness of the pipe was measured using a microscope after the experiment, and the reliability of the system was confirmed with less than 1% error. This technology is expected to also be applicable to the thickness-reduction monitoring of other high-temperature materials.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.381-388
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• 1998

The ultrasonic method, which is well known as non-destructive test method, is widely used to evaluate the material damage caused by degradation practically. However, this method is just used for measuring the crack size and the thickness loss of tube. The purpose of this study is to investigate the applicability of the ultrasonic technique for the evaluation of carburized material and to suggest the correlations between the ultrasonic characteristics and carburized degradation. The miniaturized specimens($40{\times}20{\times}6.3mm$) are adopted from the HK-40 (25Cr-20Ni-0.4C) centrifugal cast tube after carburization treatment. Carburization was carried at $1200^{\circ}C$ by the pack method. The results of ultrasonic test present that the longitudinal wave velocity increased with the increase of carburized depth. The correlation between the longitudinal wave velocity and carburization was changed with the density and Young's modulus. Therefore, the average velocity in the materials carburized for 336 hours and the unused one were 5,840 m/s and 5,755 m/s at 5 MHz, respectively. With the obtained results from this study, it can be recognized that the technique using the ultrasonic velocity property is very useful method to evaluate the degree of carburized material non-destructively.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.11-20
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• 2022

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the applicability of the shear wave tomography technology as a non-destructive testing method to evaluate the debonding between the track concrete layer (TCL) and the hydraulically stabilized based course (HSB) of concrete slab tracks for the Korea high-speed railway system. A commercially available multi-channel shear wave measurement device (MIRA) is used to evaluate debonding defects in full-scaled mock-up test specimen that was designed and constructed according to the Rheda 200 system. A part of the mock-up specimen includes two artificial debonding defects with a length and a width of 400mm and thicknesses of 5mm and 10mm, respectively. The tomography images obtained by a MIRA on the surface of the concrete specimens are effective for visualizing the debonding defects in concrete. In this study, a simple image processing method is proposed to suppress the noisy signals reflected from the embedded items (reinforcing steel, precast sleeper, insert, etc.) in TCL, which significantly improves the readability of debonding defects in shear wave tomography images. Results show that debonding maps constructed in this study are effective for visualizing the spatial distribution and the depths of the debondiing defects in the railway concrete slab specimen.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.55-64
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• 2024

This paper proposes a fusion imaging-based coating-defect classification method for steel structures that uses zero-shot learning. In the proposed method, a halogen lamp generates heat energy on the coating surface of a steel structure, and the resulting heat responses are measured by an infrared (IR) camera, while photos of the coating surface are captured by a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera. The measured heat responses and visual images are then analyzed using zero-shot learning to classify the coating defects, and the estimated coating defects are visualized throughout the inspection surface of the steel structure. In contrast to older approaches to coating-defect classification that relied on visual inspection and were limited to surface defects, and older artificial neural network (ANN)-based methods that required large amounts of data for training and validation, the proposed method accurately classifies both internal and external defects and can classify coating defects for unobserved classes that are not included in the training. Additionally, the proposed model easily learns about additional classifying conditions, making it simple to add classes for problems of interest and field application. Based on the results of validation via field testing, the defect-type classification performance is improved 22.7% of accuracy by fusing visual and thermal imaging compared to using only a visual dataset. Furthermore, the classification accuracy of the proposed method on a test dataset with only trained classes is validated to be 100%. With word-embedding vectors for the labels of untrained classes, the classification accuracy of the proposed method is 86.4%.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.300-307
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• 2016

The faults in railway vehicle components may result in either the stoppage of the service and the derailment of the vehicle. Therefore, it is important to diagnose and monitor the main components of a railway vehicle. The use of temperature is one of the basic methods for the diagnosis of abnormal conditions in the rotational components of a railway vehicle, such as bearings, reduction gears, brake discs, wheels and traction motors. In the present study, the diagnose of the rotational components using infrared thermography and a pattern recognition technique was carried out and a field test was performed. The results show that this method of diagnosis using infrared thermography can be used to identify abnormal conditions in rotational components of a railway vehicle.

• The Journal of Advanced Prosthodontics
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.101-109
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• 2016

PURPOSE. To investigate the void parameters within the resin cements used for fiber post cementation by micro-CT (${\mu}CT$) and regional push-out bonding strength. MATERIALS AND METHODS. Twenty-one, single and round shaped roots were enlarged with a low-speed drill following by endodontic treatment. The roots were divided into three groups (n=7) and fiber posts were cemented with Maxcem Elite, Multilink N and Superbond C&B resin cements. Specimens were scanned using ${\mu}CT$ scanner at resolution of $13.7{\mu}m$. The number, area, and volume of voids between dentin and post were evaluated. A method of analysis based on the post segmentation was used, and coronal, middle and apical thirds considered separately. After the ${\mu}CT$ analysis, roots were embedded in epoxy resin and sectioned into 2 mm thick slices (63 sections in total). Push-out testing was performed with universal testing device at 0.5 mm/min cross-head speed. Data were analyzed with Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests (${\alpha}=.05$). RESULTS. Overall, significant differences between the resin cements and the post level were observed in the void number, area, and volume (P<.05). Super-Bond C&B showed the most void formation ($44.86{\pm}22.71$). Multilink N showed the least void surface ($3.51{\pm}2.24mm^2$) and volume ($0.01{\pm}0.01mm^3$). Regional push-out bond strength of the cements was not different (P>.05). CONCLUSION. ${\mu}CT$ proved to be a powerful non-destructive 3D analysis tool for visualizing the void parameters. Multilink N had the lowest void parameters. When efficiency of all cements was evaluated, direct relationship between the post region and push-out bonding strength was not observed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.108-113
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• 2009

MFL(magnetic flux leakage) inspection is a general method of non-destructive evaluation(NDE) of underground gas pipelines. Pipelines are magnetized by permanent magnets when MFL PIG(pipeline inspection gauge) gets through them. If defects or corrosions exist in pipelines, effective thickness is changed and thus variation of leakage flux occurs. The leakage flux signals detected by hall-sensors are analyzed to characterize defect's geometries such as length, width, depth, and so on. This paper presents several methods for estimating defect's length using MFL signals and their performances are compared for real defects carved in KOGAS pipeline simulation facility. It is found that 80% and 90% of minimum values for axial and peak values for radial signals respectively show the best performance in the point of length estimation error.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.589-592
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• 2008

Recently, as importance of quality control of the structure has been recognized, non-destructive testing, determining quality of the structure without damage, has been widely applied. However, its application has been primarily focused on laboratory development because variety of parameters in field has been not fully experienced and understood. This study aims to evaluate the field applicability of the ultrasonic testing method for PC beams. Material properties of 18 cylinders, cured in the same field condition, were measured up to 60 days and compared to those of the ultrasonic measurements from 34 PC beams in field before tensioning. Test results indicate that uni-axial strength and elastic modulus of PC beams can be predicted within reasonable range using the ultrasonic technique. However, it is also noted that considerations on field condition is required to increase the reliability of estimation.

• Journal of Conservation Science
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.467-480
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• 2014

This study was focused on measurement methods for stone cultural heritages by analyzing Ultrasonic (P-wave) velocity variations according to the water content and anisotropy of rocks. As a result of analyzing of rock properties, the water content and saturation degree were rapidly changed at the beginning of drying and then showed exponential curve which their rates of change gradually decreased. However, P-wave velocity and its rate of change maintained constant values after natural drying of 10 hours. Therefore, the ultrasonic measurement for stone cultural heritages should be performed after natural drying of 10 hours considering the weather and moisture conditions. In addition, the highest values of anisotropy coefficient exhibited in granite and limestone, and indirect method was insensitive to anisotropy compared to direct method. However, all rocks remained anisotropy by indirect method. Accordingly, ultrasonic measurement considering various directions is required. The research results will contribute to customized non-destructive testing and precise diagnosis for lithological characteristics of stone cultural heritage.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.229-251
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• 2012

Guided waves have shown a great potential for structural health monitoring (SHM) applications. In contrast to traditional non-destructive testing (NDT) methodologies, a key element of SHM approaches is the high process of automation. The monitoring system should decide autonomously whether the host structure is intact or not. A basic requirement for the realization of such a system is that the sensors are permanently installed on the host structure. Thus, baseline measurements become available that can be used for diagnostic purposes, i.e., damage detection, localization, etc. This paper contributes to guided wave-based inspection in anisotropic materials for SHM purposes. Therefore, computational strategies are described for both, the solution of the complex equations for wave propagation analysis in composite materials based on exact elasticity theory and the popular global matrix method, as well as the underlying equations of two active damage localization algorithms for anisotropic structures. The result of the global matrix method is an angular and frequency dependent wave velocity characteristic that is used subsequently in the localization procedures. Numerical simulations and experimental investigations through time-delay measurements are carried out in order to validate the proposed theoretical model. An exemplary case study including the calculation of dispersion curves and damage localization is conducted on an exemplary unidirectional composite structure where the ultrasonic signals processed in the localization step are simulated with the spectral element method. The proposed study demonstrates the capabilities of the proposed algorithms for accurate damage localization in anisotropic structures.